Police Shooting Victim

Benjamin Ivry

Originally published in The Evergreen Review Issue 104 in 2001.

The NYPD, feeling blue, pumps an apostolic number of bullets into a Hisdic Jew. shofar to sefer to Safir resounds the Kaddish for a Maccabee, who raised a hammer for all to see, in a sketch shown on Eyewitness TV -- a virtual Chagall, Jesus as Jew, mad danger to the community. Wash your hands in a golden bowl and dream your food dream, Mrs. Pilate, Hot-Lips Houlihan of the Cuisine Channel, wife to a skull. Wag your innocent behind as Icarus crashes in Borough Park. For an elephant that steps on a mine may rate a stun-gun in Bangkok, but hereabouts bullets are round and real and dark.